Calm Outside the Walls
On Friday morning we left our hotel a little earlier than usual, about 9:30, to catch a bus* that went northwest outside the ancient walls of Rome, through the Porta Pia and up Via Nomentana a way. We spotted out destination out the window and got off at the next stop to visit the basilica of Sant'Agnese Fuori le Mura (Saint Agnes outside the walls. The official site.).
Sant'Agnese is an ancient church, a 7th-century church rebuilt over a 4th-century catacomb, the site of Agnes' tomb. (Some history.) One's first view from the street is distinctly unprepossessing. In addition to being what looks like a dusty old brick building, the front of the church faces away from the street — so all one sees is the back of the building and the curve of the apse — and is built below street level. The level of the church matches the level of the catacombs, and street level is at the height of the second-floor gallery inside the basilica.
Oddly, one gets to the church by walking down the street and through a doorway that seems to have nothing to do with the church, into a courtyard where there is a passage and a staircase going down to the rear of the nave. The walls of the staircase are lined with fragments of ancient memorials that were excavated from beneath the church, words engraved in Latin and Greek in stone.
This is a basilica style church, meaning that it is shaped rather like a barn: long, narrow, but tall. There are a few chapels along the sides, but the overall impression is of a simple space, cool, semi-dark, but nicely decorated. The proportions of the church are quite restful. One of our favorite authors, Margaret Visser, wrote a book a few years ago about Sant'Agnese called The Geometry of Love. A number of photographs that accompany the book are online, with nice shots of Sant'Agnese and Santa Costanza (which we'll get to in a moment). They're worth browsing through. The ground-floor plan reveals something interesting about the building: the facade is not quite perpendicular to the walls of the nave.
There are beautiful, old mosaics to see, some paintings, the chapel decorations, the altar and baldacchino are all quite lovely. But my overall impression of the basilica is that of calm and quiet. This is a place that is not nearly so frequently visited as the "major" churches in Rome, but it is a rewarding place to visit and significant church regardless. There were people who came through while we were there, but there were times when the entire space was ours alone, and it was remarkably peaceful.
While we were there a small, young woman showed up to open the sacristy (the traditional place where one buys postcards and other souvenirs); for a small fee she offered a tour of the catacombs. We'd visited Sant'Agnese before, and we'd visited some other catacombs before, but never these. We took our tour along with a mother and her two fascinated children, and had a nice look around with narration in Italian and English. Catacombs are very evocative places, tiny and cozy, carved out of the soft tufa that is common in the volcanic region. Near the end of our tour we passed by the tomb holding the remains of Agnes, which is positioned under the altar of the church.
Sant'Agnese is actually part of a very old complex of churches. Walking behind the basilica a short way takes one to the piazza of the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza (there are photographs in Margaret Visser's collection, linked above). It started out — but was possibly never used — as a funerary building for Constantia, daughter of the Emperor Constantine. She died in 354 CE, and it's a fourth-century building. It is a remarkable rotunda shape, small and round with a dome. Around the region under the dome is a barrel-vaulted ambulatory with gorgeous (and old!) mosaics in the ceiling. The space, like Sant'Agnese, is beautifully proportioned and remarkably peaceful. (Here are two sites with information and plans and photographs: in Italian and in English.)
Outside Santa Costanza is a large lawn in the ruins of a very large early church, called an "ambulatory basilica" in the historical marker. The meaning is that it was a large, basilica style church with "aisles", additional wide spaces flanking the columns of the nave, perhaps with added chapels and altars. The aisles would have lower ceilings than the nave, which would often feature clerestory windows high in the nave walls, above the level of the roof of the ambulatory.
Sant'Agnese is an active parish today, and there was a community center where some pre-teen boys were playing basketball or somesuch, and an old man was bowling bocci balls. In the midst of all sat a small cafe in a rose arbor. We had some refreshment and sat and rested a bit, looking up at the roses growing over our heads, which were in bloom while we were in Rome.
A friend told me that she's taking a Mediterranean cruise and will be in Rome for just a couple of day. Too little time! Perhaps you can see why I suggested that a trip to visit Sant'Agnese and Santa Costanza and environs might be a good choice. In the end we were only there for maybe three hours, but it was such a calm and peaceful and interesting three hours that it seemed much greater than something that a mere three hours might contain.
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*I forget offhand which number bus, but Bill might remember.
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on Thursday, 10 May 2007 at 16.34
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I believe it was the number 84 bus. That was certainly the one we took back into Rome and down to S Andrea della Valle and Insalata Rica beside it.